Speaking at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference, Musk compared future changes to the automobile industry to the way that modern elevators replaced those that had to be controlled manually.

"In the distant future, [legislators] may outlaw driven cars because they’re too dangerous," he said. "We’ll take autonomous cars for granted in quite a short time. It’s going to be the default thing and it’s going to save a lot of lives."

While Musk doesn’t believe that this transition will happen within the next decade, some semiautonomous features are arriving on Tesla’s Model S cars later this year via a software update. It will enable vehicles to enter an autopilot mode when on motorways, but the driver must remain behind the wheel and paying attention at all times.

The update will also provide an auto-summoning feature, which allows the car to pick you up autonomously. However, this feature is illegal in public areas, so can only be used on private property.

A number of other firms have also entered the autonomous car space with Google, Audi, Mercedes Benz and Nissan all working on projects of their own.

Facing criticism online that Tesla supports seeing humans banned from driving, Elon Musk stated that his firm was strongly against the idea.

“To be clear, Tesla is strongly in favor of people being allowed to drive their cars and always will be. Hopefully, that is obvious,” he tweeted. “However, when self-driving cars become safer than human-driven cars, the public may outlaw the latter. Hopefully not.”